Since God chose you to be the holy people He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. — Colossians 3:12-15, NLT

I guess I've never taken New Year's resolutions seriously. I'm sure they work for some people. I'll bet Warren Buffet is the man he is today because one New Year's Eve, while wearing a silly party hat and listening to Guy Lombardo, he resolved to become a gazillionaire before he was 50.

But if you're like me, you've already forgotten whatever you resolved back on January 1, and now you're back sweating in the company salt mines. They didn't move you into a bigger cubicle over the holidays, your inbox is filling up, the phone is ringing off the hook, customers are knocking at the door, and February is just around the corner. Life sure moves fast, doesn't it?

Life moves fast and change comes hard. Routines and habits, both good and bad, make up the daily rhythm of our lives, and it's rare when we manage to swim out of those deep currents and push off in a new direction.

For me, change comes hard because I resist it. I'm generally content with the status quo. If I had my druthers, I think I would probably just drift with the winds.

Unfortunate as it is for my driftwood personality, I believe in a personal, indwelling God and I've invited him to rule over my life. Not rule over in the sense that I'm some beeping, herky-jerky droid slavishly following the demands of my programming — Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi; you're my only hope!

God created me, he is the author of all creation and, therefore, knows a thing or two about what makes me tick, what I need to thrive, what things are healthy and which are deleterious.

So I don't drift through life, as appealing as that may sound. But neither do I make resolutions. Instead, at the suggestion of a pastor long ago, I ask God to help me find a theme for the year, a theme that can be summed up in a single word — my word for the year. Then I invite God to help me live out the meaning of that word all year long in every area of my life.

In his challenge in Colossians 3, Paul seems to be saying something like this:

"Each morning, as you dress for your day's work, put on these clothes as well: mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness. And to complete your outfit perfectly, put on the jacket of love, for love is the fabric the entire ensemble is sewn from. And let Christ's peace rule in your hearts."

I read those words and wince, because I don't live them consistently. None of us do.

But my eyes drifted past all of those virtues and settled on a flashing red light at the end of Paul's challenge, an apparent afterthought: "And always be thankful."

Acknowledge God's favor and goodness. Live in gratitude.

My theme for this year is gratitude, because I've come to realize that I'm not very good at being thankful. Not that I'm a complainer, at least not outwardly. But inwardly, in my conversations with God, too many of my prayers are complaints about things I'm unhappy about.

It was a brisk, cloudless, January morning, a perfect day to be out and about. I was working in the yard and considering a trip to the Home Depot. At a shopping center a few miles to the south, several dozen people were queuing up outside of a grocery store to speak with their congressional representative. A little girl with an interest in politics had eagerly come along with her neighbor. A federal judge had dropped by to congratulate the congresswoman on her recent re-election. Several folks arrived seeking help dealing with government agencies.

A man in a hurry pushed his way through the line and around the folding table where the congresswoman was getting organized with her staff. He pulled out a gun and opened fire, then turned and continued shooting into the crowds gathered nearby. Gripped by a terrible psychosis, he emptied a 30-round clip and stopped to reload. A wounded woman batted the second clip out of his hand, giving others the moment they needed to tackle and hold him until the police could arrive.

The gunman had managed to shoot 19 people, killing 6. He gravely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, intending to kill her, miraculously failing. In his demented anger he wounded and murdered indiscriminately; the dead included a 79-year-old grandmother and the 9-year-old political science enthusiast.

Gabrielle Giffords had won a tough re-election battle and was looking forward to another term serving the interests of the Democratic party and her southern Arizona constituents. She loved meeting with people, listening to their concerns, and doing what she could to solve their problems. She loved politics, and seemed destined for a long and successful career in Washington, D.C.

Today, the once fluent public speaker finds conversation difficult. The bullet went through the left side of her brain, shattering the speech processing areas. She is having to learn from scratch how to verbalize her thoughts. If she is able to continue her career in public service, and that appears doubtful, she will struggle mightily with the very part of the job that came so easily to her before: interacting with constituents about the issues affecting their lives.

A deranged man turned a peaceful community gathering into a scene of horror. Neither the victims nor the authorities had any clue what they would be facing until the bullets started flying, and by then, of course, it was too late. The alleged killer had flown under the radar of anyone who might have helped him until it was too late.

Our lives take the most unpredictable twists and turns. We lull ourselves into believing that we have everything figured out, everything under control — and then we're blindsided by something we never saw coming.

Jesus had something interesting to say to his disciples when he was hours away from being arrested and crucified, an event that none of them saw coming, either. He spoke of peace, and troubles:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. — John 14:27, NIV

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. — John 16:33, NIV

It's the sort of statement that might sound arrogant, even insane, coming from anyone else. Perhaps it really does sound a bit insane as you read these words, especially if you've recently had your life turned upside down by some unexpected tragedy or grief.

At such times, Jesus claims to be able to restore our peace. At such times, Jesus claims to be the very source of the peace we desperately long for and need.

He never promises to keep sorrows and troubles away from our doors, but he assures us that we can find peace, in him.

Today, Tucson will remember that awful day with the ringing of bells at 10:11am, the moment the first shots rang out one year ago. A community deeply hurt struggles to find peace, and to find appropriate ways of honoring the dead, the wounded, and the multitudes who are still grieving. We've gathered for speeches, for memorial services, for hikes, and soon the city will erupt in the sound of bells.

Where does peace come from at such times?

When life turns upside down, may we remember the life and words of the Prince of Peace and experience the reality of his presence, his comfort, and his peace.

Photo credit: James Palka, Associated Press

Stone, brick and concrete: In southern Mexico, where wood and steel are costly, homes and offices are built with materials from the earth. The oldest buildings are constructed of quarried stone, traditionally a green-tinted limestone, or sun-baked coffee-colored adobe bricks. These were used to construct massive walls, often a meter thick, which not only supported the addition of upper stories, but kept the interior living spaces cool during the heat of the day.

Now, with greater awareness of how earthquakes work in this volcanic region, more modern buildings are constructed with a reinforced concrete framework that is filled in with kiln-fired brick or concrete block. But whatever the techniques used, these materials are cold and heavy and might have created an urban landscape that looks dreary and industrial.

Mexicans love beauty, music, art and celebration, and these values are reflected in a hundred creative ways in their homes and offices. They have discovered ways to make these cold materials express joy.

I took a walk through the Oaxaca Zocalo and surrounding streets, paying special attention to the buildings. You won't find a single structure in Oaxaca that looks like another; whereas Americans seem to prefer living in cookie-cutter communities ruled by iron-fisted boards who live to enforce blandness and conformity, Mexicans let their creativity run free.

Here is a simple home that has been converted into a business office for a company called Spectra. The windows and doors protrude slightly from the surface of the exterior wall to give 3-dimensional interest to what might otherwise have been a flat, unbroken surface. Cornices have been constructed over the arched wall openings, with a duplicate coping detail running the length of the parapet wall at the roof line. Contrasting colors are used like this in many Oaxaca buildings to draw the eye to these decorative elements. Even the wrought iron grill work, so commonly used for security, is full of curves and arcs meant to distract your attention from its primary quality — strength.

The materials beneath the surface are probably ordinary brick and stone, but with the use of decorative concrete castings and an appealing paint scheme, these cold construction materials have been given warmth and beauty. Mexicans are masters at transforming their cities into places that are appealing to the eyes.

The Guapinol store (guapinol is a very tall and massive evergreen tree) is a squat but massive building constructed of huge limestone blocks, requiring very deep door and window penetrations, as well as heavy lintels over the doors. The stone has been plastered over and the windows and roof line have been enhanced by some modest cast cornices and copings. Here, however, the owners have added interest by stripping away portions of the exterior plaster to show off the original stone and brick underneath. The stone work along the entire parapet is also exposed, which ties it to the exposed stone at the building's corner and along the base of the walls. Pleasing colors brighten the building and frame the doorways, but what really sets this building apart are the contrasts in texture between the smooth, unbroken surface of the plastered wall and the irregular joints of the exposed stonework.

Many of the buildings in Oaxaca date back to the time of the Spanish colonial expansion of the 16th century. Though they have been modernized in various ways, they have been proudly preserved as much as possible and re-purposed in creative ways.

The Hotel Posada del Virrey is a beautiful example of what can be done with a bit of imagination. On the lower levels, massive limestone arches frame the entryways. The main doorway is framed by two decorative fluted columns which seem to support the balcony above it. That balcony, which likely serves the hotel's best suite, has been framed with exposed stone that has been simply but masterfully carved and topped by a curved stone crest at the roof line. Fine craftsmanship has transformed a plain structure into a gem.

One of the things I appreciate about Oaxaca, besides the beauty that you find down every street, is how much they have done with so little. It's a good lesson. You don't have to spend lavishly to make something beautiful out of something plain. A few architectural details, some careful paint choices, and relatively plain buildings suddenly develop character and charm.

The other thing that I appreciate is the respect for history that is so evident in the preservation and re-purposing of their old buildings and parks. I watched a movie production company rehearsing a sword fight in a street beside one of the cathedrals the other day. Under the shade of a massive, centuries-old tree, in the shadow of a 16th century church, all they had to do was spread some dirt over the asphalt street to be instantly transported back in time hundreds of years.

Oaxaca is a fascinating place full of history, culture, art, beauty and tradition. If you've never been here, you're missing something special.

I've been displeased by the increasingly caustic claims — led, unfortunately, by the President — that greedy millionaires and billionaires are the root cause of all that ails our economy. It's a dangerous lie that ought to be beneath someone of President Obama's intelligence and character, but in politics, lies are often useful for deflecting attention from failures of policy, strategy or character.

The truth, and every politician and economist knows it, is that even if you confiscated 100% of all you could get from US millionaires and billionaires, you'd make only a small dent in the US budget deficit. And that for only a single year; once you've killed the golden goose, you get no more golden eggs.

Inciting anger towards corporations and the rich is a way of diverting attention from the inconvenient truth that Washington has long been a slobbering drunk when it comes to spending. And, what's worse, it owns the keys to the booze cabinet.

All this careless rhetoric against the wealthy has elevated envy to a virtue. The Occupy Wall Street movement is rooted in envy, one of the deadliest of human sins. After all, the goal of OWS, and the deranged children it has spawned in Oakland, DC and elsewhere, is to tear down capitalism (a greed-based system) and remake society around an envy based system instead. These young idealists and anarchists imagine a society where everyone gets a piece of what everybody else has, where no one will ever be allowed to stand higher than the next guy.

Capitalism succeeds because it allows someone with good ideas and a strong work ethic to rise above the average. It appeals to the competitive desire in most of us to improve, to do better.

By comparison, OWS-style egalitarianism can only succeed if we all agree to pull down those high achievers and make certain that everyone is merely average.

In that, the OWS movement shares an alarming amount of DNA with the French Revolution, and is attempting to live out its high-sounding creed in the streets: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

How long will it be before they start lopping off the heads of the wealthy in Zuccotti Park?

A system based on greed, or to put it more kindly, on improving one's lot in life, in no way rules out the possibility that I can freely choose to give away some or all of my wealth to help others. In other words, if greed plays a part in my internal motivations to get ahead, my conscience might still be pricked to consider the poor, moderate my greedy ways and share what I have with others. And, in fact, many Americans do just that.

A system based on envy, however, knows nothing about moderation. For the system to work, I must always be on the lookout for those who are doing better than I am, and I must always insist that they give me some of what they have. Envy becomes my reason for being; measuring myself against others becomes my full-time obsession.

Blame-shifting becomes an art form in such a system. In a capitalistic system, if I don't have enough I can usually look to myself and think of ways to improve myself by working harder, taking a second job, changing careers, etc. In an egalitarian system, if I don't have enough, it can only mean that someone somewhere is secretly hoarding more than he needs. I become obsessed with rooting out inequality and focus all of the blame for my troubles on others, conveniently absolving myself of any responsibility.

It's attractive to blame others for my woes. There are many societies around the world built on just such egalitarian, envy-based systems. They tend to be unhappy places, where everyone feels vaguely dissatisfied with their lot, and each one is constantly suspicious that my neighbor is holding something back, or else I would surely be doing better.

Proverbs 14:30 calls jealousy "a cancer that eats away the bones." The tenth commandment warns that we sin against God when we covet what belongs to our neighbors. In Romans 13, Paul writes that all sin, including envy, is ultimately a failure to follow Jesus' command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. "Love," Paul says, "does no harm to others."

Is it harmful to take the excess wealth from those who are rich and spread it around? The prophet Micah in the second chapter seems to say so. He condemns Israel for seizing their neighbor's lands, belongings and homes, and for stealing the inheritance that rightly belongs to their neighbor's children. Yes, God has plenty to say about the corrupting powers of wealth, but he seems to be no fan of involuntary fiscal confiscation as an alternative.

James goes further, blaming envy and jealousy as the root cause of many of the divisions he saw in the church, and by extension, in society at large:

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. — James 4:1-2, NLT

"You don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it" means that our lives will be in balance once we look to God for our needs — not government, not Wall Street, not the rich, not my neighbor, but God.

The OWS movement is all about implementing envy-driven schemes that permit us to take what doesn't belong to us, so that others foot the bill for my life needs and life choices.

Our politicians have foolishly incited the mob to make a virtue of envy. The heart's appetite for what it wants and doesn't have knows no limits. President Obama and his supporters would be wise to stuff this violent genie back into the bottle now, while they still can.

A Mexican friend was talking about the differences between the food he grew up with and American fare. There are hardly any similarities at all, but one of the things he said stuck with me: "Unless I'm served tortillas, it doesn't seem like a meal to me."

And he's right. Tortillas are an expected, even required component of every Mexican meal. I've been visiting the culturally-diverse state of Oaxaca for the past two weeks. In every indigenous community throughout southern Mexico, women get up at about 4 a.m. each day to begin the long process of making enough tortillas to last the day.

They begin with a ball of corn masa, which is either patted into a round tortilla by hand or squashed flat in a hand-operated steel press. The thin tortilla is then laid on a hot, clay comal — a heavy baking tray about the size of a large pizza — and cooked until done.

In many rural towns, the tortilla serves as an edible eating utensil. Tear off a triangle of tortilla and you can use it as a spoon for beans or rice, even soup. For larger items, a piece of tortilla can be used to pinch off a bite of chicken or squash and deliver it to the mouth.

In the cities, women purchase their tortillas fresh from a nearby tortilla bakery. The masa is fed into a machine which rolls the dough flat and die-cuts perfectly round tortillas. They flop onto a steel conveyor and move through an oven, then to a waiting employee who stacks, weighs, and sells them by the kilo at the store window.

Most of the time, tortillas are merely stacked on the dinner table, wrapped inside a cloth to keep them warm. You grab one from the stack and consume it as you would bread along with the meal. Even when I'm using a knife and fork, I will usually eat three or four tortillas per meal, often rolled up and flavored a bite at a time with some of the sauces on my plate.

Day-old tortillas are fried whole to make tostadas, broken and fried to make chips, or cut into strips and cooked with a sauce and cheese to make chilaquiles. The oldest tortillas are often served to the animals.

There really is no American equivalent to the tortilla. As a kid I used to eat sliced Wonderbread with most of my meals, but it was always an add-on. In America we love variety, so we try hard not to have the same things meal after meal. Our heterogeneous culture shows up on our dinner tables with Americanized versions of meals from around the world, and the great variety of vegetables and meats available in our grocery stores assure a constantly changing dinner experience.

The only consistent element in American dining rooms is the element of surprise.

Most of our eating traditions, what few we have, center around holidays. It wouldn't feel like Thanksgiving to me without turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. It wouldn't feel like Christmas without fresh-baked cookies. Birthdays bring cake. On New Year's we open champagne.

Last night I went out for tacos at my favorite local joint. I had tacos al pastor, which consist of a tortilla piled with some flame-grilled pork, onions, lettuce and cilantro, topped with your choice of salsa. The tortillas are miniatures, only about 3 or 4 inches across. It only takes 3 bites to devour one of these beauties, and I suspect the small size leads customers to buy more. They're so good, I had to force myself to walk away from the table.

The more time I spend in Mexico the more I have to agree with my friend: it just doesn't seem like a meal without tortillas.

Photo credit: Mexico: Food, Drinks and More